Frame relay service providers, as well as asynchronous transfer mode service providers, require a sufficient number of ports in order to provide frame relay, and asynchronous transfer mode, services. However, these ports are extremely expensive to obtain compared to ports for a conventional cross-connect systems. Further, time division multiplexed links that provide access to frame relay services are extremely under-utilized due to the bursty nature of the information being transferred. The frame relay traffic is carried on fully allocated digital circuits such as DS-0, n.times.DS-0, Ti, E1, T3, E3, et al. As a result, the variable bit rate characteristic of the frame relay traffic is not effectively exploited. Therefore, it is desirable to improve the efficiency of frame relay traffic transfer that would reduce the number of frame relay or asynchronous transfer mode ports required by the service provider.